This is the official Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list for the KioskForge project.
Please feel free to submit additional questions in the GitHub issue tracker. Alternatively, you can mail me the issue, and I'll create a new issue if needed.
The team can be contacted directly by mail at
contact@kioskforge.org.
If you have a GitHub account, please use the official issue tracker in the KioskForge repository found at:
This section contains various common questions about technical issues with KioskForge.
This is most likely because you have misspelled the Wi-Fi network
name or are using the wrong password. Please note that both are
case-sensitive, so Test WiFi is different from
Test WIFI. You need to spell both exactly as they were
given to you.
The values of wifi_country and wifi_hidden
also need to be correct, although this is mostly important when
accessing 5G+ networks using the AC+ standards.
A tip is to try creating a new connection on your phone to see if that works. If either the Wi-Fi network name or the password is incorrect, it will fail too.
As a rule of thumb, we recommend MicroSD cards over USB keys because the latter tend to become very hot and then malfunction.
As for MicroSD cards, it depends on how long the kiosk is expected to operate. If it is to be deployed for weeks, months, or a few years, virtually any MicroSD card should do. If you plan for the kiosk to operate for a decade or so, you should probably buy an "industrial grade" card with wear leveling, which significantly reduces wear on the card. I know that SanDisk and Kingston both produce MicroSD cards named "... Industrial", both of which include wear leveling. These cards are typically a couple of times more expensive than plain, non-wear-leveling cards, but I think the money is well spent because if your kiosk suddenly dies from a MicroSD failure, you'll probably waste hours dismounting, reforging, and remounting the kiosk.
If you have experience or knowledge that contradicts the above, please feel free to email me.
As of this writing, less than half a megabyte. This is negligible and should not cause any concern for you.
All files created by and used by KioskForge are located in
~/KioskForge. Please do not remove this folder as
it is required.
The setup script, KioskSetup.py, intentionally
copies KioskForge.py (the main program) onto the target for
posterity.
root after login?You should generally try to avoid becoming root, and
instead use the sudo command as the kiosk
user, but if you really need to, you can use this procedure:
# Log into the kiosk as the 'kiosk' user using SSH or local login.
# Execute the command below and fill in the requested passwords.
sudo passwd
# Enter EXISTING password for the 'kiosk' user at the prompt.
# Enter NEW password for the 'root' user at the prompt.
# Retype NEW password for the 'root' user at the prompt.This step must be done before the first time you use su
to become root.
This is almost certainly a temporary issue with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Ubuntu's servers. Either may be rebooting a DNS server or doing some other maintenance work. I too run into this issue now and then. Wait thirty minutes and try again. Be patient! :-)
set chanspec 0xNNNN fail, reason -52I'm pretty sure these were caused by the lack of the
wifi_country option in pre-v0.20 releases of KioskForge.
Basically, the network driver was complaining that an incorrect channel
was attempted selected because the Ubuntu Server Wi-Fi subsystem did not
know the correct country for the network card. The new
wifi_country option is used to tell the Wi-Fi subsystem the
legal set of channels that can and may be used in the kiosk.
I have not seen these errors since v0.20, so please let me know if they suddenly pop up again.
apt is already using a lock file?KioskForge tries to take the fact that apt is a rude
process, that keeps meddling with central lock files at arbitrary times,
into consideration (apt runs in the background even if the
package unattended-upgrades has been completely removed),
by waiting for the lock files to be unlocked again, so you should not
run into this issue.
If you run into this issue, please report it.
The most likely reason for this issue is that your installation media, typically a MicroSD card, is becoming worn and unreliable from overuse. Another possibility is that your USB key is too hot, which happens quite often.
Try another installation media (preferably another MicroSD card), and the error(s) should disappear.
If the problem persists, report it as a bug. It may be some obscure error in KioskForge.
This section contains various common questions about the development of KioskForge.
For the time being, I am very happy with Ubuntu Server (which I have used as a web server for a decade or so), so this is not very likely.
I could theoretically add support for a host of Linux distributions, but I don't really see the point. Ubuntu Server is free, very stable, and well-documented. The software is also reasonably up-to-date, and security issues get fixed quite quickly in my experience.
Adding support for a single target platform can take weeks or months, as Linux is a mess when it comes to operating system administration. Almost every distro does things in its own way, and I, honestly, don't feel like battling a lost war on the intricacies of a bunch of Linux distros.
Debian could become a candidate for KioskForge support sometime down
the road, because Ubuntu is based on Debian and because Ubuntu is
getting rather annoying these days (snaps, snaps, snaps, everywhere,
even though the technology is only half-baked yet). Chromium (the
open-source variant of the Chrome web browser) has been quite a pain to
work with because it is a snap, not a standard Ubuntu apt
package.
No, the problem is that PCs are non-standard in every way, from the CPU to the graphics to the audio, and so on. I prefer to make KioskForge as stable and reliable as at all possible, instead of having to support a crazy number of possible and real PC builds.
Supporting only two very standard target platforms at the time of this writing makes my job a lot easier and, hopefully, yields a stable, trustworthy, and flexible product that you and others can use for free.
I originally wrote the first version of KioskForge in Bash because it was very simple in the beginning, but I soon missed Python.
In short, because Python v3.x is preinstalled on many Linux distributions, and Python is a great scripting language.
This is a work in progress; pretty soon, you will be able to use KioskForge on both Windows and Linux. Feel free to request this.
I don't have any Apple boxes and don't feel like spending a fortune to add support for a platform I don't use myself.
Not likely.
It could do this by using the wmi package for Python (as
RPI requires a physical drive to be specified). But I am much more
focused on making a Linux newbie-friendly solution than offering all
sorts of gimmicks. It is important to me, and most users, that they can
launch KioskForge simply by double-clicking it without having any
technical knowledge of Python, Linux, and kiosks as such, so I won't be
exploring this path anytime soon.
Also, I sleep better knowing that people can't accidentally erase important data using KioskForge.